Editor’s Note: After reading this, please visit the follow up to this article here.

If a system does not interact with its environment in any way. . . it does not exist in nature.

I will start this article with the definition of an isolated system: implies a system that does not interact with the other systems of its environment in any way. Now I ask: Does an isolated system exist?

An isolated system is based on something that is not fund in nature. Curious. Heretofore – all scientific exploration has looked at things as isolated systems. For example, we try to separate something and look at it as small, separate parts. . .the cell, the nervous system, the elements of the periodic table, apples, flowers, tables, etc. but this does not exist in nature – not in any system, not in gravitational pull, not in biological functions, not in mechanical engineering, not in sociological systems, etc. In Tibetan Buddhist teachings this is referred to dependent arising or pratityasamutpada. It is the notion that things only exist as referential systems to cause and effect by other things. Or, nothing exists in a closed-system. The Huayan-Zong school established during the Tang dynasty teaches this point as a primary focus of its spiritual theory. The Upanishads and Vedasspoke of this repeatedly. There are countless other traditions throughout India, Japan, Asia, Korea, China, Australia, Africa, and elsewhere which tell the same story.

I will use geometry to explain this point. Take any shape, for now, we will look at a circle – is this an isolated system? It divides space between inside and outside. In fact, each circle is only another point of information, or energy. Within a circle, there can be smaller circles, and so on – infinitely. So again, it is not an isolated system, because the ‘space’ can always be divided into smaller diameters, or larger diameters, so the outline of the circle is just a temporary description of energy or information. This is essentially what fractals are – an infinite description of information into smaller and smaller, recurring shapes or definitions of space. But these definitions can be redefined infinitely. There are no isolated systems. This is the premise of holographic physics. All information is present in each part because it is referential to all other parts of the ‘system.’ The system, therefore, is not closed, but infinite.

People are similar. We use our outlines, just like the diameter of a circle to define ourselves, and act as if we are an isolated system, but we are not. We say we don’t have enough food, money, time, energy, etc. but this is pure fallacy, scientifically. If we are infinite, then so are our resources. Our energy is infinite. Our information is infinite. The finite self is an illusion – not just in esoteric or spiritual terms, but in scientific ones.

Space is everywhere – between galaxies, stars, quasars, planets, atoms, in the densest material, there is still space. Buckminster Fuller said, “Nothing touches.” That is how much space there is. Even an atom is made of 99.99999% space. It is the .00001% that we call the ‘real world.’ We call this isolated system reality. We ignore the truth on a daily basis. Matter doesn’t define space. Matter is defined by the space.

The unified field theory, as first proposed by Einstein when he attempted to correct our concepts of a closed system by merging the general theory of relativity and our understanding of electromagnetism, or electromagnetic interaction, the heretofore unknown organizing substance that holds together quarks to form neutrons, protons, and the nuclei of atoms, short range electroactivity, and gravitational interaction on all particles is still a theory because scientists do not understand what organizing substance or principal allows the continuous interaction of all systems. In fact, in most modern physics, gravity is the hardest force to include in the unified field theory because general relativity and quantum mechanics seem to be at odds with each other.

It is in fact, the supposition that these ‘closed systems’ react independently of one another that forms the final conundrum. A TOE or theory of everything has to pull together all known forms of physical matter – to explain what spiritual folks have been asserting – that we are all one. Archimedes and Einstein have attempted the TOE as have surfing scientists in Hawaii and numerous well-credentialed professors at Universities the world over. Plato and Socrates wanted an answer to our unity, as did Galileo.

If one were to read the paṭicca-samuppāda, an important Pali text, one can decide that everything exists or that nothing exists, polar opposites to the truth of the matter – that in relation to one another, there is a middle way. (Yes, the famous middle way that the Buddha spoke of) which ties all phenomenon – physical, mental and otherwise – together. In fact the word loka, which is often translated to mean ‘world’ really means ‘an open place or an open space.’

Space Makes Up 99.99999% of All Things

If we are truly 99.99999% space and the world, or loka is an open space or place, then how are we limited, or a closed system at all? We are an open-system, integrally related, dependent on one another for existence and actuality. Physicists may not yet have nailed down the TOE but there is irrefutable scientific evidence that cannot be ignored. We are all one morethan metaphorically, in a lets-all-hold-hands-and-sing-kumbaya way – but physically, mentally and relationally.

Ronkin,Noa. 2005. Early Buddhist Metaphysics: the Making of a Philosophical Tradition. London, Routledge Curzon.

About the Author

Christina Sarich is a musician, yogi, humanitarian and freelance writer who channels many hours of studying Lao Tzu, Paramahansa Yogananda, Rob Brezny, Miles Davis, and Tom Robbins into interesting tidbits to help you Wake up Your Sleepy Little Head, and See the Big Picture. Her blog is Yoga For the New World.

This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.

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Nice article, though “we are all one” could confuse people a little, while the reassurance about the true nature of so-called hell will be a welcome reassurance for many, especially those seeking to break out of the Abrahamic religions without getting burned (for ever, again and again, and again).

We certainly are one cosmic community of souls, and it certainly behooves us all to go as easy as we can on each other because of this. But won’t “we are all one” create a little Carlos Castaneda type dilemma? What if one starts to merge with a wall, or with some strange astral atmosphere, or mistakes one’s soul to be someone else’s material body, or even someone else’s soul? That will really creep people right out. Psychic chaos and pandemonium will result.

Of all the thousands or millions of different wavelengths and dimensions and different souls that one could contemplate on, the thought of merging with them is an entirely different subject altogether, when one could instead merely relate to them harmoniously as a conscious individual. Would someone else welcome us suddenly coming on to them and saying; “I am you, I am going to absorb you”, or “merge into you”. What if that is not a particularly savoury or comfortable prospect for one or both parties? And are we supposed to go within to get out? Or to get out to get in?

The ancient Vaishnava philosophy of achintya bheda bheda tattva proposes that a cosmic tuning fork to give objective guidance would be the Supreme Psychopomp, Krishna Himself. Krishna is the nexus of all souls, as well as the communal Higher Self/Supersoul, and Supreme Lord of all of us. If we find ourselves slipping into unchartered wavelengths, and we need a little balance, we can call on Krishna to redirect us and set us straight. Without knowing what is spiritual and what is astral for instance, how will you know so easily, but Krishna as Supreme Guru knows the true quality of everything, and can guide us in all things. There are many so-called gurus in this world who fraudulently claim to have become God, who say merge with this and merge with that, and they can cause much inner trouble. I have spoken with several of these gurus at length, of different nationalities, and you know what, they have to ask what certain English words mean! So how can they be God?, but they take your money and your love, defrauding you of both.

Personally, I stay well clear of advaitists, who say “we are all one”, who teach we are all God but that we have all forgotten, as the people teaching are not what they claim to be, so how can they possibly teach someone else to become that which they themselves have not yet become.

God does not have a name really, these Sanskrit and other language names are purely descriptions of the innumerable and unique qualities of that Supreme individual, that can call Him to us when we meditate on those qualities, and Krishna just means ‘The all-attractive (Person)’ in Sanskrit. The following link is to a very ancient book, Sri Brahma Samhita, that was rediscovered by Sri Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the most recent incarnation of Krishna, who manifested in Mayapur, West Bengal in 1486, I hope you like it; http://bvml.org/SBS/index.html

I think you’re looking at it literally. People who believe ‘we are all one’ don’t try and physically merge with other people or ‘creep’ people out. It is merely a way of looking at the world and seeing how we are all connected, not feeling in fear of the ‘other’ because the ‘other’ possesses many qualities that you possess. They may just be using those qualities in a negative way. You can look at Oneness from a spiritual, emotional or even scientific perspective. At the end of the day, I don’t take it too seriously but it really helps me to forgive people. I have never associated ‘being god’ with Oneness. I merely try and feel our connection and make sure that I feel no more superior (or inferior) to anyone else.
It is definitely a helpful perspective in my life

An issue regarding this kind of “Oneness” that I raise is the unconditional lover between the prey and their predator/parasites?

In general, after we engage in SUBTRACTION, then, there must necessarily be ROBBERY across the thus defined boundaries.

I like to try to use a synthetic mode of thought, and apply unitary mechanisms, to try to understand human ecology and political economy. There is still “Oneness” through the history of war! The oldest book on the Art of War starts by saying that success in war in based on deceits, and ends by saying that spies are the most important soldiers. The imperatives of militarism are just as much a part of the Unity as every other aspect of That. Those people who fill the niches of the top carnivores inside our human ecology were integrated into the Oneness too … (pun intended.)

Those who talk about the Unity and Oneness tend to focus on the pleasant “mom and apple pie” aspects of environmentalism, rather than on the “red in tooth and claw” aspects. They like to fall back on false fundamental dichotomies, when it comes to human morality, psychology, etc., in the context of the resolution of social problems. However, although one may well say everything is vibrational, there can thereby be plenty of relative noise, rather than any simple harmony we could perceive.

While I liked most of the article above, I think we need to step up our game, in light of the infinite tunnel of deceits found through the profound paradoxes of militarism. It was NOT an accident that every possible effort was made to suppress genuine spiritual understandings. It all boomerangs around to hit us in the back of the head, as Oneness comes out of our blind spot!

Very well put. All materially incarnated souls maintain the existence of their material bodies in this world by taking the material bodies of souls incarnated in other forms of life, sometimes even taking the bodies of others from within the same species. Even today, Pygmies in the African Congo, who are lovely people with extraordinarily delightful singing ability, are protesting to the UN against genocidal treatment by soldiers there, who refuse to recognize them as human beings, and eat them as ‘bushmeat’, along with gorillas and other simians.

Even in eating single-celled lifeforms, like chlorella and spirulina, we are taking the material body of another materially incarnate soul.

Ultimately, this is a parasitic existence for virtually all species, except for souls incarnate in most forms of plant life, but even some of them kill insects and even other plants to survive, beyond the actual area of parasitic consumption, by releasing toxins from their bodies and roots.

This current situation is an analogical representation of the fact that all souls incarnate in this material world have previously ideated about attempting a parasitical relationship in the spiritual world, by inappropriately trying to ‘assume’ the substance or positions of another, and because this type of attitude is not constructive behaviour, such souls are sent here to predate on each other, to learn a lesson of the ultimate futility of it, until they tire of such predatoriness, and are one again fit to resume their eternal positions in the spiritual domain.

Souls in the spiritual world are not clothed in external material regulatory bodies, such as we are incarnate in here in this world, so the attempt to assume the substance of another in an inappropriate manner relates to such an attempt on the eternal soul itself of another living there.

No such behaviour is allowed to manifest in the spiritual realm of Vaikuntha, so when souls there become lazy and forgetful of how to relate to others, becoming inconsiderate of the welfare of others in this way, they become relegated to dwell in this prison house in regulatory bodies to teach them how to live a practical spiritual life in order to return to their true eternal position in the spiritual world as quickly as possible.

The regulatory bodies are placed over each soul to give them as much pleasure as is possible in relation to their degree of spiritual knowledge, or lack of it, in such a manner as to help them escape maya, though where due diligence is lacking, maya is empowered to seduce and grab hold of recalcitrant souls and further hold them in other material incarnations. This is not intended totally as a punitive arrangement, more a temporarily restrictive and educative experience, as every soul is accepted as a jiva expansion of Krishna Himself, in subordinate jiva form, so naturally He wants all souls to enjoy as much pleasure as possible, but when they go insane and start to harm others, then some influence is used to reduce this as much as possible.

Thus, a lunatic who loves to commit violence out of sheer sadism will no longer be granted a highly articulate and intelligent human bodily vehicle in which to further such insanity; rather, such a soul will find themselves in a species without such advanced faculties, but where they can still advance in some manner, as they are, after all, part of the spiritual collective for all eternity, and never become ‘non-viable’, irredeemable, or without a soul.

We may all interact, but we are not “all one”. We are distinct and finite… that is not an illusion. The illusion is that by conceptual confusion of “connected” and “unified” you have been able to ignore the distinction between a property of a thing and its essence.

We are all one in only a superficial sense of all having something in common, namely that we all exist and are in at least some tertiary way connected. But to assert that there are no important differences, or in fact to fail to recognize that there is a very fundamental and supremely important distinction to be made between individuals, as well as between kinds of individuals taken collectively, is not only very sloppy and irrational pseudothinking, but is outright blandishment on an ethical level.

You probably think that “good” and “evil” are merely relative terms, and you probably think that they, like “yang” and “yin” refer to merely differences which are in the end, as in the beginning, illusory. You are wrong about this. There is in fact such a big difference that reality itself is not one, but two. And these will only meet on the razor’s edge of utter conflict until one neutralizes and assimilates the other completely.

Take for example the difference of our positions, yours and mine. They are utterly irreconcilable. Each will attempt to define the other into itself without compromise with the other. But your position, I can readily and accurately predict, will attempt to seem to acknowledge my position as a subset of itself taken to an extreme which is “right for me” but not necessarily reflective of any absolutes in reality… yet this interpretation is self-contradictory since it in turn claims a distinction between an absolute truth centered on itself (namely the relativity of all truths taken subjectively), and yet this would nullify itself if taken seriously.

“The finite self is an illusion – not just in esoteric or spiritual terms, but in scientific ones.”

Please cite the specific scientific observations that establish this. I’m pretty sure science knows nothing of actual infinities (and, in fact, has no way of recognizing them as such), but I’m willing to be wrong if you got the data.

Many people are waking up to find that WE ARE NOT ALL ONE!!! Personal experiences abound including why suffering is not equally shared and why some people can drain others of spiritual energy (Prana). In these end times the differences between those who are good and those of evil will increase.

This may be an interesting article to some but it is not science. There isn’t scientific proof that we are all one. There may never be. Because it may not be true The more you keep attempting to explain your view with false ‘science’, the farther away you are from actually accessing the mystery. If you’d stop trying to convince yourself & others, you might find yourself perfectly content to know that no one knows anything of that for which there are no words. Some of the stuff we make up about it is sublime. Some, like this ‘scientific proof’ where people attempt to create associations with things like disparate texts & philosophies, are not.

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